PLOT – Paleolimnological Transect

The Russian-German Project PLOT was funded in the period 2013 - 2021 by three grants of the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), which were coordinated by the University of Cologne (grant nos. 03G0859A, 03G0859A, 03F0830A). The project provides a detailed reconstruction of the Late Quaternary environmental and climatic history along a more than 6000 km long transect crossing northern Eurasia, with special focus on the hitherto poorly known preglacial history. 

For this purpose, the potentially very old lakes Ladoga, Bolshoye Shuchye, Levinson-Lessing, Taymyr und Emanda (see map) were investigated by shallow and deep seismic surveys and cored down to up to 56 m using a new coring device. Consistent stratigraphical, sedimentological, geochemical and biological analysis were carried out on the sediment cores, supported by numerical ice sheet and climate modelling, in order to decipher the climatic and environmental development along the transect beyond the Last Glacial Maximum. The sediment succession from Lake El´gygytgyn, which was recovered within the scope of an international deep drilling project (see El´gygytgyn Drilling Project), functions as reference.

The German contribution to the PLOT project was organised in three subprojects, which aim at (i) the climate and vegetation history, as reflected by the lake sediment composition, (ii) the three-dimensional sediment architecture in three of these lakes, to be deduced by seismic surveys, and (iii) climate history with special emphasis on the water cycle, as reflected by stable isotopes in diatoms and numerical modelling. These subprojects are run by the University of Cologne, the University of Kiel, and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Potsdam and Bremerhaven, respectively.

The results provided a significantly improved understanding of the climatic and environmental responses to external impacts and complex feedback mechanisms in the climate system. Thereby fundamental data were generated that support predictions of the climatic and environmental development in the Arctic in the near future, which are of great importance both for global heat and mass transport and for regional socio-economical developments.

More detailed information on the scientific results is provided by Melles et al. (Eds.) (2019, 2022), Baumer et al. (2021), Gromig et al. (2019, 2022), Lenz et al. (2021, 2022), Andreev et al. (2019, 2024) and several other publications.